Eighty years lay between the landing at Botany Bay in 1788 of the First Fleet, carrying 736 convicts (men and women), and the arrival of the last ship in 1868. During this period, the continent served first as an enormous jail, and then it gradually transformed itself into a flourishing nation. How this happened and the anguish attending it are the themes of this book. Drawing upon original sources (letters, diaries, and obscure documents), the book reveals the squalor and depression behind the gracious facade of Georgian life (in 1797 one in eight Londoners lived by crime) and the repressive laws used to extract the poor from English society. Portrayals of the months-long voyages of the convict ships document the health-threatening conditions infrequently relieved by a few humane doctors and ships' captains. Acts of debauchery and sadism often marked the arrivals at Botany Bay. The spread of the prison colonies in Australia is described, colonies whose conditions were such that convicts even drew straws to decide who would commit suicide so that the others might be shipped back to Sydney to be tried for murder. The book recounts how colonial administrators and jail keepers struggle to make sense out of an economy founded on slave labor and backward technology. New aristocrats emerge, aping the social fashions of England and gradually creating a distinctive Australian culture that prefers to ignore its origins. Chapter references, 470-item bibliography, subject index. (Publisher summary modified)